Gov. Jan Brewer supports Hugo Salazar but not Joey Strickland?

One man presides over a state military agency in dire need of reform, a place where fraud was forgiven, where sexual abuse was tolerated while whistleblowers … not so much.

This month, a Defense Department report confirmed corruption and lax discipline within the Arizona National Guard.

The other presides over a state veterans agency on the upswing, one that’s been cleaned up and now gets high marks from the people it serves. Last month, the director hired someone Gov. Jan Brewer didn’t like.

Can you guess which one of these agency heads was ridden out of office?

It’s a curious call that has veterans across Arizona mystified and just plain mad.

“They blew it,” said Rick Romley, president of the Arizona Veterans Hall of Fame Society,referring to Brewer and her advisors. “There’s no other word I can say. They blew it.”

Brewer spokesman, Matt Benson, says there is no comparison between the Guard’s adjutant general, Maj. Gen. Hugo Salazar, and the now ex-director of the Veterans Services, Col. Joey Strickland.

“These are totally different situations,” he said. “Different circumstances.”

I’ll say.

Strickland was appointed in 2008 to clean up Veterans Services, where both the agency and old soldiers in the state-run nursing home were victims of neglect. He has since opened a second Veteran Home in Tucson and was expanding services across the state when he got the bum’s rush last month.

This, after hiring former state Rep. Terri Proud. Proud hadn’t even started work as a $40,000-a-year administrative assistant when she made headlines with comments about women in combat.

Brewer’s office hit the roof and pressured Strickland into resigning, saying that he had disobeyed a “direct order” not to hire Proud. Strickland has said he assumed it was OK to hire Proud once she left the Legislature. He acknowledged that he should have cleared it with Brewer and asked to rescind his resignation.

Commence the cold shoulder for Strickland.

Meanwhile, clean-up operations are under way at the Arizona National Guard, where Salazar has commanded since April 2009 when he was promoted from second in command.

In October, Republic reporter Dennis Wagner exposed corruption within the agency over the last decade, including sexual abuse, forgery, embezzlement, a shocking account of recruiters and cadets “hunting” the homeless with paintball rifles and ethical lapses by senior officials. As Wagner put it, “a systemic patchwork of criminal and ethical misconduct that critics say continues to fester in part because of leadership failures and lax discipline.”

He wrote of non-commissioned officers reprimanded after driving drunk in military vehicles, of recruiters transferred after forging enlistment records or taking fraudulent bonuses, of sergeants given counseling after having sex with teen-age recruits.

Of whistleblowers harassed or threatened with demotions.

Last week, a Department of Defense report confirmed Wagner’s findings, concluding that the agency suffers from commanders who act unethically, a culture of favoritism and a look-the-other-way mentality when it comes to misconduct. The report noted that Salazar is working to address the problems.

Brewer condemned the wrongdoing as “unacceptable” but gave the Guard’s top guy a pass.

“The findings are not an indictment of the Arizona National Guard, nor its leadership,” she said, adding that Salazar plans to retire in the fall.

Brewer has asked Salazar to submit a plan for reform by Friday.

Salazar, the guy who may not have been the top guy when problems began but has presided while they persisted.

Salazar, who in January released a new ethics code that seeks to block whistle blowers from talking to the media.

Romley is still looking for parts of his lower jaw, which slammed onto the sidewalk when he heard the news.

“He’s going to help develop corrective action,” Romley said. “That is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. He was part of the problem. Look at the effort he made when this was being looked at. He tried to muzzle everybody. You don’t allow the person that was part of the problem to design the solution. You just don’t. It makes no sense at all.”

Brewer’s spokesman, Benson, disagrees.

“I don’t think anyone has claimed that the issues that have arisen at the National Guard are all the fault of the adjutant general,” he said. “They’re not. He has taken responsibility for the fact that some of these things have occurred under his watch. But that does not mean they are the result of him or of insufficient management or leadership.”

I suppose there are worse things that could have happened on Salazar’s watch or while he was No. 2. Worse, that is, than harrassment, than embezzlement and forgery and soldiers running around Sunnyslope in search of homeless paintball targets.

He could have hired Terri Proud.

(Column published May 14, 2013, The Arizona Republic.)

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